Nothing changes on ground for Palestinians needing ‘food, shelter, safety’, who see Trump’s plan as ‘distant, abstract’.
Israeli attacks have killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza in the latest violations of its tenuous ceasefire with Hamas, a day after the United States announced the start of the second phase of President Donald Trump’s plan to end Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the besieged territory.
A 10-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy and an elderly woman were killed in Israeli attacks on Friday, as members of a planned Palestinian technocratic committee sat down for the first time in Cairo to prepare for the rollout of phase two of the peace plan.
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Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces shot dead 16-year-old Mohammad Raed al-Barawi in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya. The boy died “instantly” after being shot in the head by Israeli forces, said the agency.
Earlier, the agency reported the death of 62-year-old Sabah Ahmed Ali Abu Jamea, who was killed by troops firing from military vehicles west of Khan Younis as the army carried out “extensive demolition operations” in the south of the enclave.
media also understands that a 10-year-old girl was struck by a bomb dropped by an Israeli drone in Beit Lahiya, dying shortly after arriving in critical condition at al-Shifa Hospital.
In the 24 hours leading up to Friday afternoon, at least 15 Palestinians were killed, six of them in the bombing of two houses belonging to the al-Hawli and the al-Jarou families in the central town of Deir el-Balah on Thursday evening. Fatalities included a 16-year-old.
Israel announced that day that it had killed Muhammad al-Hawli, a commander in the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. It said it had hit “several terrorists … across the Gaza Strip”.
On Friday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group believed Israel had committed a “new violation” of the ceasefire by carrying out strikes in Gaza.
At least 463 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire entered into force on October 10, according to Gaza authorities.
Israel has reported three soldiers killed over the same period.
Seven years to clear the rubble
As the killing continued in Gaza, a Palestinian technocratic committee set to govern Gaza as part of President Trump’s multi-phase peace plan met for the first time in Cairo.
“The Palestinian people were looking forward to this committee, its establishment and its work to rescue them,” said leader Ali Shaath, an engineer and former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), talking to Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera News.
The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza will run day-to-day affairs under the oversight of a Trump-led “board of peace”, which is expected to be led by Bulgarian diplomat and politician Nickolay Mladenov.
Shaath has so far been bullish on the committee’s plans, saying he expects reconstruction and recovery to take about three years.
But the United Nations Development Programme estimates it will take seven years just to clear the rubble, and only with uninterrupted supplies of fuel and heavy machinery – by no means guaranteed with Israel continuing to occupy more than 50 percent of the strip behind the so-called “yellow line“.
Little clarity
As the Trump plan enters phase two, there is little clarity over the timing and the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from the enclave.
It also remains unclear how disarmament of Hamas, a key tenet of the plan, will unfold. The armed group has so far refused to lay down weapons.
Nevertheless, Hamas welcomed the establishment of the technocratic committee on Friday, calling it “a step in the right direction” and signalling it was ready to hand over administration of Gaza.
Sultan Barakat, a professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, told media that Hamas’s approval indicated it had “papered over” its long-running differences with the PA.
Trump has maintained a tough line on Hamas disarmament, telling the group on Thursday that it could disarm “the easy way, or the hard way”, warning it to return the remains of the last Israeli captive “IMMEDIATELY”.
Reporting from Gaza City, media’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said people in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of whom are living in flimsy makeshift shelters in the depths of winter, had “little expectation that political plans will translate into genuine relief”.
“For most people here, the promises about phase two of the ceasefire agreement feel distant and abstract, while food, shelter, water and safety remain urgent concerns,” he said.
